Splitting String By Whitespace Without Empty Elements

August 1, 2018

When working on code that involves handling strings, you may come across situations where you need to split a string based on whitespace characters while also ensuring that no empty elements are included in the resulting array. This is a common requirement in many programming scenarios, and fortunately, there are simple ways to achieve this in various programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Java.

Let's start by looking at how you can accomplish this in JavaScript. In JavaScript, you can use the `split()` method along with a regular expression to split a string by whitespace while omitting empty elements. Here's a quick example to demonstrate this:

const str = "Hello  World   From  Friendly   Assistant";
const result = str.split(/s+/).filter(Boolean);

console.log(result);

In this example, the `split()` method takes a regular expression `/s+/` as an argument, which matches one or more whitespace characters. The `filter(Boolean)` function is then used to remove any empty elements from the resulting array, giving you a clean array of non-empty words.

Moving on to Python, achieving the same outcome is straightforward using the `split()` method with a list comprehension. Here's how you can do it in Python:

text = "Hello  World   From  Friendly   Assistant"
result = [word for word in text.split() if word]

print(result)

In Python, when you call `split()` without any arguments, it automatically splits the string by whitespace. The list comprehension `[word for word in text.split() if word]` ensures that only non-empty words are included in the final list.

For Java developers, you can leverage the `split()` method in conjunction with the `stream()` API to achieve the desired outcome. Here's how you can do it in Java:

import java.util.Arrays;

public class SplitStringExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String str = "Hello  World   From  Friendly   Assistant";
        String[] result = Arrays.stream(str.split("\s+")).filter(s -> !s.isEmpty()).toArray(String[]::new);
        
        System.out.println(Arrays.toString(result));
    }
}

In the Java example, we split the string using the regular expression `\s+`, which matches one or more whitespace characters. Then, we use the `Arrays.stream()` method along with the `filter()` method to exclude any empty strings from the array.

By following these simple examples in JavaScript, Python, and Java, you can efficiently split a string by whitespace while eliminating empty elements from the resulting array. This approach can be incredibly useful in various programming tasks where you need to process text data efficiently.